Progress comes in many guises

True to my word, I started running this week.   I've run a total of (are you ready for this??) 4.65 miles.  Wow.  Be impressed.   All joking aside, though, that's a pretty big step forward.   My knee has been mostly cooperating with me, though it takes some concentration to keep my right foot from drifting sideways into my left.   Something that seems to help with this is to shorten up my stride.  Now, my stride is already pretty short, but today I went from doing four counts to six counts and not only did my knee feel better, but I also shaved a good 30 seconds off my pace.   At that count, I'm running close to my cycling cadence (by my rough estimation).  Not sure if that's good or not, but it seems to be working.   

Since I've done so well this week, I think I might reward myself by running the Big Woods 5k.  If you remember, the Big Woods run was supposed to be my 1/2 marathon debut.  Sadly, that is not to be.  However, it's a fun run and the weather looks to be perfect.   The Big Woods should be beautiful and it will be good to get some dirt on my trail shoes.   It'll be a little strange to go to an event solo, but I'm sure I'll manage.   Fingers crossed for a cool shirt again this year! 

My back issues came to head again this week.   My back has hurt in a predictable way for years, but in the last few weeks it's gone from a constant 3-5 kind of pain to an intermittent 9-11 kind of pain.   Like, takes my breath away, fall down kind of pain (really, I fell down today...it wasn't pretty, but was probably funny).   Anyhow, I went to the chiro and sat down to have a heart to heart with him.   He agreed that this was an undesirable turn of events and decided he needed to get some pictures of my spine to see what was up.

Well, that revealed some surprises.  In his preliminary review of the films, he told me he saw that I had a compression fracture in one of my vertebrae.  He thinks it's an old injury, though I'm not entirely certain what I could have done to break my back.  The only thing that comes to mind is my infamous ski accident, though my (admittedly vague) memory suggests that I wasn't moving in the right direction for that injury.  In the end it doesn't matter, I guess, because that isn't the cause of my problems.  Go figure.  Only I could have a broken spine and have that NOT be why I'm in pain.   

His initial assessment is that my low back is mechanically weird (my words, not his).   Basically, the way I'm built appears to be tailor made for causing me pain when doing pretty much everything I like to do.   However, and this is the important part, even though it hurts, I'm not doing any damage.  So, if I can withstand the pain, I can do what I want to do.  Strangely, I'm okay with this.   With the recent intensity of my pain, I was super concerned that I was going to be told I had some degeneration of the discs, or some other hopeless kind of condition.   This, this I can deal with.  I can work to strengthen the core to better support the weakness in my spine and I can (and probably will) take fistfuls of meds to control the pain in the meantime.   It's not ideal, but at least it means I can continue to do this thing I've grown to love.   

Sadly, for my friends, this means I'm unlikely to stop being a whiner anytime soon.    Sorry about that.   Feel free to tell me to pop my pills and shut up.   :)